AKASH SAMA­ROO

Fate un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly and cal­lous­ly left lit­tle time for the Bhowram fam­i­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence the joy of wel­com­ing ba­by Luke in­to the world.

With the now six-week-old in­fant sleep­ing peace­ful­ly in his moth­er’s arms, bliss­ful­ly un­aware of the threats to his mor­tal­i­ty, Shali­ni Bhowram re­count­ed how quick­ly the day of his birth went from un­bri­dled de­light to ab­ject de­spon­den­cy.

“He was di­ag­nosed with Com­plex Cyan­ot­ic Con­gen­i­tal Heart Dis­ease that’s when the ar­ter­ies are switched and he has three holes in this heart, two large and one small,” the 28-year-old moth­er said at their Long­denville home.

Cyan­ot­ic con­gen­i­tal heart dis­ease in­volves de­fects in your heart that re­duce the amount of oxy­gen through­out your body. Most ba­bies with CCHD will need treat­ment to sur­vive. Treat­ments in­clude oxy­gen ther­a­py and surgery to re­pair the de­fects or redi­rect blood flow.

Glanc­ing down at his face Bhowram strug­gled to ex­pound. Her re­spons­es were brief and ev­i­dent­ly painful. It’s hard to fault her. It would be dif­fi­cult for any­one to say such grave things about some­one so dear, del­i­cate and vul­ner­a­ble.

“It’s very se­ri­ous be­cause they said if he does not do the surgery he won’t live be­yond six months,” she said with a plead­ing and help­less look in her eyes.

She con­tin­ued soft­ly, “I was very heart­bro­ken, I just start­ed to cry, I was scared that I would lose my ba­by.”

Luke’s pro­ce­dure must be done in In­dia.

The fam­i­ly was suc­cess­ful in se­cur­ing as­sis­tance from the Chil­dren’s Life Fund (CLF) for the op­er­a­tion, how­ev­er, the CLF’s mon­ey will on­ly cov­er the air­fare and ac­com­mo­da­tion for one par­ent. It’s a tough choice to make with both par­ents want­i­ng to be there not on­ly for Luke but for each oth­er as well.

“I want to be there for my son to breast­feed him and it will be dif­fi­cult for my hus­band to take care of him alone. Af­ter the surgery, he would be in the ho­tel for two weeks and I want to be with my hus­band to take care of him. Be­cause he will have tubes in his nose so to feed him would be dif­fi­cult,” the moth­er ex­plained.

A rel­a­tive start­ed a Go­FundMe ac­count for the Bhowram fam­i­ly with the goal of USD 9,000. Shali­ni ex­plained those funds will al­so go to­wards any mi­nor cost over­runs that may arise dur­ing the pro­ce­dure.

As of Fri­day, De­cem­ber 27, USD 1,873 was raised.

But time is of the essence.

“They said it is sup­posed to be done with­in two months,” Shali­ni said while ac­knowl­edg­ing that Luke is less than two weeks away from that dead­line.

How­ev­er, she ex­plained that an ill­ness he suf­fered led to a forced de­lay in his pro­ce­dure.

“Luke got the flu, and be­cause of that they can­not per­form the surgery if he has cold in his lungs,” Shali­ni added.

“I get scared a lot be­cause the doc­tor said around this time his heart could fail. So it’s pos­si­ble his heart can start fail­ing and it could re­sult in...death,” she said al­most re­luc­tant to con­clude the sen­tence.

Luke is now over the flu and the fam­i­ly now has the cru­cial task of keep­ing him away from fur­ther in­fec­tion.

We even wore face masks and kept at a dis­tance from the child, sim­i­lar to pro­to­cols used at the height of COVID-19.

Look­ing on ea­ger­ly was the Bhowram’s first­born. The 4-year-old girl, de­spite her moth­er’s plea to stay away from the cam­era, de­fied those in­struc­tions and walked over to com­fort them. The child placed a kiss on her broth­er’s head and her moth­er said it would be their wish to take the el­der child with them as well to In­dia.

Shali­ni said the four of them are in­sep­a­ra­ble.

As his sis­ter count­ed his num­ber of toes aloud Shali­ni ex­plained that some­times his feet and fin­ger­tips would turn a slight shade of pur­ple due to his con­di­tion. A hue of warn­ing that the clock is tick­ing.

Shali­ni said with or with­out the ex­tra funds Luke will be leav­ing in the sec­ond week of the new year.

“I’m scared but I am try­ing to keep pos­i­tive, pray a lot and hope there aren’t any com­pli­ca­tions,” she said.

She ex­plained that her hus­band, who was at work at the time, was a shad­ow of him­self.

And while the home had the slight essence of the Christ­mas sea­son, maybe for the sake of the 4-year-old, Shali­ni said their on­ly fo­cus was on Luke’s sur­vival.

“I love him, and I want him to have a nor­mal, healthy life, and to grow old,” Shali­ni said, now smil­ing at Luke who awoke from his post-meal nap.

Shali­ni ex­plained while in the­o­ry rais­ing USD 9,000 may not seem like a dif­fi­cult task, with on­ly her hus­band work­ing and the ris­ing cost of liv­ing, it is mon­ey they sim­ply do not have.

Any­one wish­ing to help the Bhowrams reach their goal of ac­com­pa­ny­ing Luke as a fam­i­ly for his surgery in In­dia to sup­port his phys­i­cal and their emo­tion­al needs can con­tact them at 297-6544. Do­na­tions can al­so be made to their RBTT Chequing Ac­count 6600 6390 0401.

The Go­FundMe page can be ac­cessed at https://go­fund.me/53610515